He played Admiral Boom in the film about the extraordinary nanny and the poet Orevoire in Donkey's Skin, a lawyer in Thieves-in-Law and a member of the bachelor's club in My Dear Beloved Detective, chemistry teacher Karl Sigismundovich in The Draw and Monsieur Tardivo in The straw hat. "
And one cannot fail to mention one of the best roles of the great actor - Mikhail Mikhailovich Bomze in "The Meeting Place Cannot Be Changed." He played an elderly single man living in a communal apartment, Sharapov’s neighbor. In the recently concluded war, his only son was killed, pride, hope and support. The wife died, never recovering from grief. And now he has quiet nights in the shared kitchen and conversations with his young neighbor, officer Volodya Sharapov.
Yes, this is all about him, about one of the best and most talented actors of Soviet cinema. And the biography of Zinovy Gerdt (namely, this person will be discussed) is reread many times by admirers of his talent.
Youth Zyama
Zinovy Efimovich Gerdt (Khrapinovich) was born in the city of Sebezh (Pskov Region) on September 21, 1916. At birth, he was given the name Zalman Afroimovich Khrapinovich, but in the family people close to him affectionately called him Zyama. His dad, Afroim Yakovlevich Khrapinovich, first worked as a clerk in a fabric shop, and a little later as a salesman. The mother of the future actor - Rakhil Isaakovna - was an ordinary housewife. In the family, in addition to Zinovia, there were two more girls - Bert and Fira - and the eldest boy - Boris.
In his hometown, he studied at a Jewish school; in his childhood, Zyama knew Yiddish perfectly. The biography of Zinovy Gerdt is interesting in this fact: while studying at school, one of the literature teachers introduced the boy to poetry. And from that moment on, for many, many years, it was she who became the most important and important hobby of the whole life of the great Soviet actor.
TRAM
When he was fifteen years old, Zinovy Efimovich graduated from the school of the Moscow Electric Plant named after Kuybyshev. He comes to work for Metrostroy as an electrician. And here, at the factory club, TRAM was organized (the theater of working youth). Gerdt Zinovy Efimovich once read an ad in which everyone was invited to this theater. He decided to try his hand. And he was absolutely right. This is the first in his life a very important decision once and for all changed his life. He began to play in serious performances, gradually getting used to the backstage.
A little later, the biography of Zinovy Gerdt underwent some changes: in 1937 he got a job as an actor in a puppet theater at the Moscow House of Pioneers. And already here he continues to act.
War
The difficult summer of 1941 came. A terrible war began for the entire Soviet people. Zinovy Efimovich decided to go to the front as a volunteer. Very quickly, he received the next rank. Gerdt Zinovy Efimovich never remembered that he was an artist. In the winter of 1943, during one of the battles, he was seriously wounded in the leg. A nurse saved him from death. The actor was treated at the Botkin Hospital for more than a year, he was operated on ten times, but his leg could not heal. The woman who saved him from amputation was Ksenia Vincentini, the chief surgeon. She decided to try again, which turned out to be very successful. The bones gradually fused. The leg was saved, but now it has become eight centimeters shorter than healthy, which is why Zinovy Gerdt, whose films are loved by the viewers, was lame for the rest of his life.
Puppet theater in the life of an actor
While still being treated at the hospital, he saw a puppet theater who came to the wounded soldiers on tour. Gerdt was impressed by the performance he saw and later, when he arrived in Moscow, after the Victory, he sent his stops to the puppet theater under the leadership of Obraztsov. Now he was in the troupe and worked there until 1982, almost forty years. All his works in the theater were loved by the audience and recognizable.
Many puppet characters spoke in his voices, and the most famous of them was the entertainer from the Extraordinary Concert. He perfectly mastered the complex art of onomatopoeic and during tours to different countries played the role of entertainer in local languages and even dialects so masterfully that all the spectators were convinced that he knew their language. Whatever his work in the theater — Aladdin or Old Devil, Adam or herald — he was an amazing ventriloquist.
The road to cinema
In the late sixties Gerdt was invited to the cinema for two episodic roles. But thanks to the fact that the directors discovered great potential in him, he played two diametrically opposite characters - the modest Kukushkin and the prokhenda Panikovsky.
In each of the played images, the actor brought in his own meaning, which could differ from what was planned. He very vividly depicted the character of the heroes. This was obtained not only due to the unique talent, but also by high intelligence.
In the movie, Gerdt played more than a hundred roles, which were striking in their diversity. The directors who idolized him specially invented for him at least a small episode. And he knew how to refine his every role.
The biography of Zinovy Gerdt is full of magnificent roles in which he not only played a character, he lived it.
His family
Tatyana Pravdina - the wife of Zinovy Gerdt - had no contact with the artistic environment. She worked as an Arabic translator. Once she was offered a job while touring the Obraztsov Theater in Egypt, Syria and Lebanon. There they held a meeting with Gerdt. When Tatyana was introduced to her future spouse, his first question was whether she had children. Very quickly, her two-year-old daughter Catherine became for Gerdt the dearest person in the world. And later their common daughter Maria was born. Their marriage took place immediately after the tour. They lived 36 happy years ...